150 acres of dreams dashed: Buyer now sought for super-collider site

Houston Chronicle ^ | March 15, 2003 | Jim Henderson

[Physicist]

Curiosity, mainly as to the lack of any sort of an adjective along with the word "physicist".

Aaah, so you clicked on it because wanted to know more about me. I see.

I guess then it's fortunate that my web page talked about me, instead of, say, shoes or toasters.

[stanz]

I pity the generation of elementary school-age children growing up in a world where such things as social progams, welfare and healthcare for illegal aliens take precedence over the quest for scientific discovery. The dismal public school system can't even teach the English language,nor is it allowed to convey the thoughts and ideas of eras gone by without insulting one group or another. Science has become the domain of the elite who can afford a decent education and the future hinges on whether the investments are wise.

[Condorman]

"Ghost of Science Past" placemarker

[AndrewC]

Gettin'-rich-on-public-largesse ping.

Well, science "must" be funded somehow and our Constitution mentions it by establishing a task for our Congress-- To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;. However, you can see that the means of funding it were intended to be private.

[gomaaa]

Could they? Maybe. Would they? I highly doubt it. Basic research, almost by its definition, has very little immediate commercial application, therefore little prospect for profit. I don't see any new sellable gadgets or technology coming out of Fermilab anytime soon, but the Tevatron is currently the best tool we have for studying the building blocks of matter. It's not going to give us a "muon bomb" or something like that, but a more detailed understanding of our universe could help us further down the road.

I just don't see businesses having the foresight for such a long term horizon when their shareholders are baying for immediate profits. It's not an "evil" of capitalism, just the nature of the business. True, pharmeseautical(sp?) companies start research on new drugs years in advance of any real results being available and tech companies do similar things, but we're talking times scales of decades for some science being commercially useful. The only entity with pockets deep enough and a long enough investment horizon is the government.

[chimera]

Who knows what other worthy projects the geniuses in Congress will kill, to save pennies, while they spend hundreds of billions every year on various welfare programs -- all money down the drain forever.

This is always my response to the leftist dimbulbs who continually whine about "so much money being wasted on (science, space, military), when we could be spending that money better on (welfare, social programs, The Earth)", blah blah blah. Spending on welfare and other various social program failures absolutely dwarfs anything spent on the Apollo program, or high energy physics, or whatever. So whenever the libs pull that crap on me, I tell them, we have spent so much more on welfare and social programs, and where has it gotten us? Has it solved the problem? No, and in many cases, has made it worse.

At least with Apollo, or the SSC, there was a defined endpoint. Either you were going to do it, or it would be cancelled. With the welfare program failures, its a never-ending failure, a voracious money pit that seems bottomless, destined to suck the lifeblood out of productive, tax-paying citizens.

[Ben Chad]

I guess then it's fortunate that my web page talked about me, instead of, say, shoes or toasters.

Love your humor and patience with dorks.

[Paul_Denton]

I wish the US Government would reactivate it and use it for its intended purpose. I remember reading about this in old issues of National Geographic when I was young. We need more facilities like this. These are as important as the space program. We cannot let europe and china take any lead.

[wideminded]

"The SSC promises to do little more than provide permanent employment for hundreds of high-energy particle physicists and transfer wealth to Texas,"

One thing that made me feel the right decision had been made was after the cancellation when I heard some physicists on the radio whining about how they had thought the people of this country wanted a SSC, how they had already taken their kids out of the schools they had been attending, etc.

[kittymyrib]

Who remembers "Operation Mole Hole", another taxpayer-funded waste of money by the ivory-tower scientific community? I say that if the project is so great and so necessary, surely they should be able to attract private investors to fund a project. The government invests too much money in these worthless ventures.

[hopespringseternal]

A perfect example of why congress is second only to Al Qaeda as the most hated group on the planet.

First they deem something important enough to take peoples' homes from them, then a couple of years later it is so unimportant that given an identical estimate to shut it down or continue it, they decide to shut it down.

Meanwhile, the space station has proved to be utterly pointless, built in the wrong orbit merely as a foreign aid device that lets the Russians save face.

[Lazamataz]

I'm not bitter about the lack of job prospects. Nobody owes me any sort of job. Lord knows I'm not in it for the money: after more than 11 years of college and 10 years experience at the Ph.D. level, I make less than the starting pay for a local public school teacher. That choice is entirely mine.

North Korea's hiring. ;^)

[Ditter]

Just a little aside to those of you who are not from Texas or don't know how to pronounce Waxahachie. It is WALKS-ah-hachie. I remember hearing the pronunciation butchered on national TV.

[animoveritas]

The current US National Science Project is the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) in Oak Ridge Tennessee.

Most physicists don't think the CERN boondoggle will get very far with finding Higgs Boson, and will probably just be another experiment than creates more questions than it answers. As someone else already posted, there are smaller scale experiments and theoretics that are a better use of money.

By contrast, the SNS produces neutron beams for actual science and engineering application. The US will be the lead in Neutron Science for generations with this project. And as far as national pride goes, the SNS dumps an order of magnitude more high speed protons from its main beam line (non-usable energy), than the next most powerful accelerators in the world (including CERN) use as good protons in their research. More power Ahrgh, Ahrgh, Ahrgh!

And the best part...its on schedule and under cost.

What may be the only drawback is that by resourcing SNS, the US will probably not have the money to bring the next generation fusion reactor (ITER) to US soil. It will probably be built in Asia with us a partner.

[Physicist]

Most physicists don't think the CERN boondoggle will get very far with finding Higgs Boson,

You know nothing about it, nothing. If there is a Higgs to be found--and almost all particle physicists expect that there is--the LHC will find it very quickly. It's as close to a guaranteed discovery as anything in the history of science.

[rabidralph]

FReeper National Compound!

[animoveritas]

Ahhh, you noted the challenge here..."if."

That's why I left physics for engineering. When you know with 99.999% accuracy how things work, run with it.

Wasting money on the 0.0001% to chase a dubious theory is noble, but foolish given other temporal challenges. All the best!

[Physicist]

And IF there is not a Higgs, the discoveries of the LHC will change the face of physics. But that's a best-case scenario.

Of course, that will create many, many more questions than it answers, but that's the true hallmark of successful science. If you don't appreciate that, you are indeed better off out of physics.

[animoveritas]

Dear friend, you seem somewhat bitter. Your rather terse assessment is non-sequitur. If we are pursuing a "god particle" are we not trying to answer questions rather than create more? I need something to engineer, something to pervert for purely capitalist gain. I need to know how gravity field waves/particles/franisats work, so I can produce cheap limtless power. More questions won't help be with the bottom-line. :^)

Maybe the superstring guys can help me unravel a couple of dimensions..."Throw me a freakin' bone here."

[RadioAstronomer]

Killing the SSC was, in my mind, like our retreat from the Moon. Two giant steps backwards. At least we have the Hubble. Who knows what other worthy projects the geniuses in Congress will kill, to save pennies, while they spend hundreds of billions every year on various welfare programs -- all money down the drain forever.

Well said. Except Hubble will be dead soon as well. Just waiting for the gyros to die. :-(